Sony to cough up $8.5m settlement, devs finally get paid

by James Ransom-Wiley { Jun 27th 2007 at 5:57PM }

The law offices of Shapiro, Haber & Urmy have publicized the settlement terms of a class action lawsuit filed against SCEA in February 2005, which alleged that the company failed to compensate a number of game developers for overtime work. The settlement will see $8.5 million paid out to current and former employees involved in the suit, and, along with the overdue checks, Sony will "reclassify" Associate Artists and Artist 1s as nonexempt (from overtime pay) job positions. Under the terms, Sony will uphold its denial of the allegations, admitting to no wrongdoing. Ah, formalities...

The settlement is still pending court approval. Regardless, the deal would be called off if for some unimaginable reason (it's "free" money, people!) enough class members opted out.

Tags: class action, ClassAction, lawsuit, overtime, scea, settlement, sony

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jose @ Jun 27th 2007 6:11PM

I hate settlements. All they do is ensure that a company can do the exact same thing again, and have the possibility of getting away with it.

Joshua Marketis @ Jun 27th 2007 6:38PM

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, free munnies.

Spitkicker @ Jun 27th 2007 6:42PM

"Under the terms, Sony will uphold its denial of the allegations, admitting to no wrongdoing."

Gotta love the courts. We know the truth SONY.

YouFaceTheTick @ Jun 27th 2007 7:20PM

Most software companies can be nabbed for this type of lawsuit as they purposely mis-classify employees as exempt in an effort to avoid OT.

unosturgis @ Jun 27th 2007 7:43PM

way to screw the guys that make the games for your failing system!

"YOU MUST WORK 20 HOUR DAYS, WITH NO OVERTIME UNTIL YOU FINISH THIS GAME THAT WILL MAKE US MILLIONS!!"
"But master, I need to eat & take a nap!"
"NO EAT & SLEEP! JUST PROGRAM!"

Ahhh SONY, what a lovely employer!

Dan @ Jun 27th 2007 7:45PM

1. I hate settlements. All they do is ensure that a company can do the exact same thing again, and have the possibility of getting away with it.

Yeah, and people file class action suits to teach companies a lesson, not just to get money. erchem

mccomber @ Jun 27th 2007 11:01PM

Damn, there are artists out there making overtime monies? I'm in the wrong industry...

sheppy @ Jun 28th 2007 12:07AM

mccomber,

Sonys not exactly the first to get caught on this. Due to legislation in relation to the film industry, classifying people under certain circumstances relates to "free overtime during crunches." However, while this is a time Sony got caught, make no mistake, Sony was nowhere near as bad as some others. For example, EA got caught mainly because they would shift people from team to team to get past "crunch times." So in other studios, once crunch time happened, they'd get to the payout milestone and then drop back down to about a 40 hour work week. EA was simply moving staff from one crunch to another. And while most studios, crunch time equals 60 hours a week for a couple weeks, EA was a consistant period of 80+ hour work weeks extended over several months.

Honestly? I'm classified for unpaid overtime but fortunately, I'm not in an industry where the money the company uses to pay paychecks is based upon reaching a publishers milestones so it's more optional than anything.

jc @ Jun 28th 2007 2:35AM

This is complete and utter bullshit. I'm a software developer and this happens EVERYWHERE. Not just in games. Hell, where would you rather be... at Sony spending weekends at crunchtime building a game or at Microsoft working your ass off to finalize Exchange server before launch.

But why the whiners? We get paid on average near 6 figures for a job to sit at a computer and type. Other people out in the world have to do real work, and some god forbid have to deal with customer service. Trust me, anyone sane would rather work 80 hours a week developing games than work 20 hour a week at CompUSA, even if the pay was the same.

Also, for every crunch time, theres down time. After a game ships and during design phase, developers pretty much can come in at noon and leave at 4. So it all usually evens out to around 50/hr a week per year. For every 80 hour week, theres a couple 30 hours weeks.

sheppy @ Jun 28th 2007 9:13AM

Although I do have to say this, unless I know the specifics of the ordeal, no clue how bad Sony was on this. I chat with a couple people from Sony all the time and they've only talking about crunches, not outright abuse (in fact, one CAME from EA).

Steve @ Jun 28th 2007 9:44AM

"Yeah, and people file class action suits to teach companies a lesson, not just to get money. erchem

Posted at 7:45PM on Jun 27th 2007 by Dan"

Yeah, when you grow up, you'll see that most class action suits pay exactly fuck all to the people involved so your sarcasm is waaay off there. So it usually IS to lay the smack down on a company.

Hackett @ Jun 28th 2007 12:10PM

One reason why people may not join the class action suit is because they only receive about 60% of the settlement. Class action suits are still lawsuits and the attorneys in the settlements still receive their 40% "fees". There is definitely a conflict of interest with attorneys who want to quickly settle out of court and take their 40%. I specifically abstain from all class action lawsuits for this reason.